Sunday, August 30, 2009

I took some pictures of these incredible mushrooms today, coincidentally, a day after buying the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms. I grew up with this book around the house, which I found fascinating because of its glossy black pages and images of strange fungi. It's a beautiful book, slim and tall with dark brown plastic covers. When I go for walks, I love looking for mushroom. Strange little creatures that appear like magic, poking their heads out of the wet leaves after a good rain.

These mushroom are huge by the way. The pinkish white one (chicken of the woods I believe) is about two feet across and the orange one (jack o ' lantern I think) is about three feet.

I'll also share with you some pictures of another field guide to mushrooms soon. It has the most wonderful color palette. I'll also show you some of the weaving I just made... Inspired by graph paper!

Summer is over, so there will be more time to talk about all these wonderful things.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

That's right, there is just one more week of summer classes here at Penland. There are many things to look forward to this fall. Less hustle and bustle, sweater weather, scarves, and an eight-week letterpress class with Bryan Baker,formerly of Yee-Haw Industries, continuously amazing. Speaking of amazing, I just finished a two week class with Eileen Wallace of Mile Wide Press. Eileen is a letterpress printer, book artist, paper maker and painter. Also, an incredibly talented teacher who's taught me a great deal of what I know. I can't thank her enough. I'll be posting images shortly of some new books.

I woke up last night having dreamed about being in a japanese paper store. It was a wonderful dream, directly linked to the following. I was looking at a Shinwa cutting ruler online right before going to bed. I covet this tool. I swear, good quality cutting edge rulers must be illegal in this country or something because I can only find them for sale in Europe and Japan. Secondly, I was talking to my boyfriend about how I am searching for graph and ledger papers, a topic I find breathlessly fascinating. Now it is time to clean my studio space. I have some books and drawings to make for friends...